Go, Spartans!

Week One: East Lansing, MI

Exhausted does not begin to cover the way I feel toward the end of my first week in the deep end of the pool that is the First National Tour of "Spamalot." It's been a tough adjustment all around. Remember the feeling you had that first day of school in a new town, or the first week on campus as a college freshman? Well, that's the feeling I have had coming into a group of people who are well established in their jobs and the touring way of life. It's all new. And that can be very exciting. For me it has been a mixed experience, mainly because the control freak part of me doesn't love not knowing stuff! And honestly,I am learning the nuts and bolts as I go along.

East Lansing is dominated by Michigan State University, a massive campus, and the theatre, the Wharton Center is an enormous facility with a beautiful Grand Hall in which the show is performing. It's quite something to see this production in such a cavernous space after the comparatively intimate Shubert in New York. But the audiences love it here as much as they do there. The show is just the perfect blend of naughtiness and ribaldry combined with a sweetness that is at once an homage and a sendup of musical theatre. I am staying in a terrific little hotel with a nice plaza across the way with very good and wonderfully cheap restaurants, and the company has been given free access to the Michigan Athletic Club, also across the street and one of the three largest health clubs in the world. And I need to keep my strength and energy up for the task at hand!

I have been learning the show from Graham and Tera-Lee, the two terrific dance captains, who have been incredibly helpful, and our Associate Conductor Adam has taught me the music and a simplified piano bit which I have to learn as part of my big number, affectionately known in the company as "The Jew Song." I have been wondering if I am in fact the first Jewish person to play Robin...

As of this posting, I have learned all the choreography in the show that I am required to know and all my music parts. Not bad for four days' work!! I have my aches and pains and am looking a little worse for wear but I do feel I have a good handle on the bones of the part. Next week in DC, our Production Stage Manager Ken will come back (from mounting the Australian production) and work with me on the scenes I have to play between all the musical material. I have been very fortunate that Robert Petkoff, who I am replacing in the role, is not only terrific in the part and a joy to watch, but is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. I am actually a little sad that I won't have a chance to work with him! He has been so helpful and so welcoming. The first night I met him he said, "I guess I'm the old you and you are the new me!"

It's been a weird adjustment for me getting used to the complex ways that the tour operates and I will learn--patience has never been one of my predominant qualities. I am a little hampered that my old laptop computer decided to retire itself yesterday and in DC I will have to bite the bullet and buy a new computer. There goes the Christmas budget! To my lovely family and friends--you may be having a little extra Yuletide in January...

I am excited to get to Washington, where I spent such a wonderful year working on my master's degree and to be there for a month means a chance to see old friends and teachers and to reconnect with that terrific city. "Spamalot" was a triumph during it's first engagement there on tour so it is a grand return engagement which will, I am sure, with the holidays around it, be festive and very exciting--what a great way to begin my performances as Sir Robin. Meantime, we leave Michigan Monday, and I am so grateful for the cheerful, helpful people and the great CHEAP meals I have enjoyed here! Stay tuned, friends, for news from our nation's capital.